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Capacitor creator/Ionic co-founder here. Didn’t expect to see this on the front page! Disclaimer: it’s still alpha. We’re building Capacitor based on feedback

Capacitor creator/Ionic co-founder here. Didn’t expect to see this on the front page! Disclaimer: it’s still alpha. We’re building Capacitor based on feedback from the Ionic community to improve our ability to move across platforms such as App Store/web/electron, make it easier to interact with Native SDKs, mix web and native UI, and manage native app projects/tooling. One feature I'm really excited about is having Web UI implementations of many Native experiences when running on the web/electron. Here's an example of how the `Camera` plugin looks when running in the web: https://twitter.com/maxlynch/status/961749127657910272 https://twitter.com/maxlynch/status/961749127657910272. This uses our new Ionic Web Components so you can easily use these controls with low overhead even if you aren't using Ionic. We hope Capacitor will be useful to other web developers that want to build mobile and desktop web apps, even if they aren’t using Ionic, and we’re building support for hitting the hybrid sweet spot of native UI shell (nav/menus) with web content. Capacitor will eventually be replacing Cordova in Ionic’s toolchain so it’s going to be a core part of the experience.

madhato 9y ago
Why not add changes to Cordova instead of making a replacement?
- Sujan 9y ago
  Capacitor is not Cordova plus a bit of stuff, but a total reimagining how such a tool should work. Cordova for example is defined by dynamic platforms you can add or remove, or that builds are (or can be) done with the CLI. Capacitor has none of that.
joshstrange 9y ago
Can you point me in the direction of any documentation you might have on how a project should be handled with regards to source control? Currently my team doesn't commit the generated platforms/plugins folders but it appears that with Capacitor we might need to start committing some/all of these since it isn't expect to re-generate them from a config.xml like it was with cordova.
- Sujan 9y ago
  You commit it all (except what .gitignore already ignores or your IDE adds), the native projects are are not build but source artifacts here. Benefit: Once the project is created, you can modify and adapt it in any way you want and have those changes versioned like all other code changes.
  - joshstrange 9y ago
    That is awesome news! Rebuilding the native projects on a CI server was always a huge PITA with gross hacks to make certain things work.

madhato 9y ago

Why not add changes to Cordova instead of making a replacement?

Sujan 9y ago
Capacitor is not Cordova plus a bit of stuff, but a total reimagining how such a tool should work. Cordova for example is defined by dynamic platforms you can add or remove, or that builds are (or can be) done with the CLI. Capacitor has none of that.

joshstrange 9y ago

Can you point me in the direction of any documentation you might have on how a project should be handled with regards to source control? Currently my team doesn't commit the generated platforms/plugins folders but it appears that with Capacitor we might need to start committing some/all of these since it isn't expect to re-generate them from a config.xml like it was with cordova.

Sujan 9y ago
You commit it all (except what .gitignore already ignores or your IDE adds), the native projects are are not build but source artifacts here. Benefit: Once the project is created, you can modify and adapt it in any way you want and have those changes versioned like all other code changes.
- joshstrange 9y ago
  That is awesome news! Rebuilding the native projects on a CI server was always a huge PITA with gross hacks to make certain things work.